In what seemed an attempt to only lengthen the film, Herzog included a pair of albino alligators. This attempt had originally appeared to me as a poor addition for I believed it didn’t add anything relevant to the film. But then he raised several points that compared us to the crocs, which seemed to actually be a fantastic metaphor for humanity, for we have changed significantly from our ancestors as have these crocodiles that barely resemble even their parents.
What can be drawn from the main part of The Cave of Forgotten Dreams was the ancient peoples’ immense appreciation and respect for nature. The majority of all cave drawings were that of animals rather than themselves, which leads us to the conclusion that they were extremely connected to the environment. However, in the postscript, Herzog compares us (humans) to albino alligators, and how they no longer resemble their parents or ancestors. The alligators were included in the film as a metaphor for human beings. Herzog’s postscript intends to point out that human beings have become extremely disconnected from the environment, and he illustrates this by noting that the albino alligators now live in baths that are fed water from the nuclear power plant nearby. Additionally, these crocs are so far removed from their actual habitat that they seem foreign compared to their ancestors, and in a sense, so are human beings. We now disregard nature and it seems as if we only add toxins to the air and water around us. We now look different than our ancestors, and we resemble them in seemingly no way at all when we compare our appreciation for the environment. Herzog did a fantastic job at pointing out how humans have made many changes for the worse. And I think that in a way, he was trying to say that we need to return to our roots, and revive our respect for nature.
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